KATHY BROWN
‘Hard choices’

Housing advocates urged city leaders last week to adjust income guidelines for newly created affordable housing to help more of Boston’s lower-income residents.

They also want the city to require developers of market-rate housing to include more units for lower-income families within their projects and to increase the fees that builders of commercial space pay to fund affordable housing.

The requests came at a hearing held by the City Council’s Housing Committee last Tuesday to discuss cuts to federal housing assistance programs and potential reforms to Boston’s affordable housing programs and policies.

Several who spoke at the hearing said new housing units that are supposed to be affordable are really unaffordable to many Boston residents, particularly renters.

Under some city policies, new affordable housing is targeted to those earning up to 80 percent of the area median income, which is defined by federal standards as $66,150 for a family of four. City policies also target some housing for middle-income households – those earning 80 percent to 120 percent of the area median income, or between $66,150 and $99,120 a year.

Boston’s area median income stands at $82,600.

But according to Michael Stone, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who has researched Boston incomes, most of the city’s households earn much less. The median household income for the city of Boston is $42,600, said Stone, citing statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Most of the recently created ‘affordable’ housing in Boston for this low- and moderate-income group is in fact affordable only to households with incomes of about $42,000 to $66,000,” Stone told the committee. “But Â… nearly half of all Boston households have incomes below $42,000; therefore they cannot afford this so-called affordable housing.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determines metro area median incomes. The Boston metro area contains 127 communities, including some of the most affluent suburbs in the state such as Weston.

“Given the distribution of incomes in the city, about two-thirds of the households in Boston cannot afford any of this new ‘affordable’ housing,” Stone said. “Most [of] Boston’s middle-income households are financially excluded even from the city’s so-called ‘middle-income’ housing.”

Citing statistics provided by the city, Kathy Brown of the Boston Tenant Coalition said the majority of people who are paying more than half their incomes for rent make less than $24,780 a year.

“Many of these households have to make such hard choices every month as whether to pay for housing or food, medicine, transportation to get to jobs, or other basic necessities,” she said.

‘A Bad Precedent’
Over the years, the city has adopted a variety of policies to boost affordable housing production. One such policy, called inclusionary zoning, requires developers of 10 or more units to either make 13 percent of the units affordable to those earning between 80 percent and 120 percent of the area median income or to build the units elsewhere in the city. In some cases, developers can make a cash contribution that gets placed in an affordable housing fund that’s administered by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

But Brown said those funds and units only benefit a small portion of residents who actually face housing burdens. According to the city’s own statistics, only 365 renter households whose incomes are over 80 percent of the area median income have a rent burden, said Brown.

“Yet, we are targeting inclusionary zoning units and $5 million from inclusionary zoning funds to benefit that small class of tenants,” she said.

Brown and others at the hearing said fees that are collected under the city’s inclusionary zoning policy should be administered by the Neighborhood Housing Trust instead of the BRA. Currently, the Neighborhood Housing Trust uses fees collected from commercial developers to create and preserve affordable housing for people with incomes below 80 percent of the area median income.

Thomas Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, said the city could take several steps to increase affordable housing production, including hiking the cash contribution that residential developers are allowed to make in lieu of building affordable housing units under the city’s inclusionary zoning.

When the inclusionary zoning policy was initially approved in 2000, developers were able to contribute $52,000 per unit. Callahan and others said the fees should be higher so that they more closely reflect construction costs. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino signed an executive order in February to increase the fee to $97,000 per unit.

Callahan also suggested hiking linkage fees, which haven’t been raised since 2001. Under the city’s linkage policy, developers of commercial space above 100,000 square feet are required to pay $7.18 for every square foot to pay for affordable housing.

MAHA works with residents earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year who cannot afford the market-rate or affordable housing that’s being built in Boston, Callahan said.

“We want people making $35,000 to be able to afford housing in the city,” he said.

Callahan also said the city should push to put the Community Preservation Act on the ballot next year. The act enables cities and towns to add up to a 3 percent surcharge on property tax bills and receive state matching funds. Money collected under the CPA can be used for affordable housing, historic preservation and open space. A drive to pass the CPA failed in 2001.

But Callahan disagreed with Brown, Stone and other advocates who want the city to stop using the median income as HUD defines it, and instead use the lower city median. Callahan said while he agrees that the city should target housing resources to people earning less, he believes changing the income guidelines would “set a bad precedent for the region.”

Callahan said wealthier communities also might seek to adjust their guidelines to reflect the higher incomes within their towns.

“[It] might have a few unintended consequences,” he said.

Several people at the hearing acknowledged that targeting affordable housing units to those with very low incomes would require more public subsidies.

Officials from the BRA, Department of Neighborhood Development and the Boston Housing Authority were not at the hearing. According to City Councilor Charles Yancey, chairman of the Housing Committee, the officials had scheduling conflicts. Yancey said they would be invited to another hearing to discuss the recommendations made last week.